Reviews

Long before TV hits Wentworth and Orange is the New Black, there was Chicago, the John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse Broadway Musical collaboration about women in prison for killing their lovers and husbands, their slimy lawyer and corrupt prison warder. Based on a 1926 play, it’s inspired by real criminals of the time, telling its satirical tale of celebrity criminals and the corruption of the legal system in the vaudeville style, used as a sort of Brechtian device

Rhinoceros, written in 1959 by Romanian / Frenchman Eugene Ionesco, illustrates how radical groups such as the Nazis, fascists or communists can come into being and sweep the people up into their beliefs. As a model, he has used the rhinoceros that at first seems strange and unattractive but lures most into the group. This is Theatre of the Absurd and heartBeast has staged it in a theatre that matched the play. In the Reservoir Theatre, at the bottom of four flights of stairs, the audience sat on three sides of a small square stage between four pillars.

I Am My Own Wifeis a fascinating one-person play by Doug Wright about the life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, an off-beat and passionate museum curator and antiquarian who lived through the Nazi era and Communist East Germany, and was an openly transgender woman.

Director Joe Hooligan Lui, perhaps better known as a lighting and sound designer, brings sensitive but strong direction to this excellent story, and is also responsible for the clever and moving sound-scape.

Subtle and nuanced, with superb characterisation, Bell Shakespeare’s latest Merchant of Venice is a beautiful interpretation, much of which hinges on a densely-layered and very human characterisation of Shylock. Mitchell Butel imbues Shylock with dignity and grace, making an absolutely recognisable orthodox Jew right down to what sounded like authentic Hebrew prayer.